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| By John Petersik | January 9, 2023 |

How We Protected Our Plants From Freezing Temperatures

Lush Tropical Landscaping In Florida Home

Last month’s arctic blast brought surprisingly frigid temperatures to Florida. We had three consecutive nights with temperatures in the low 20s – and an ultimate low of around 18 degrees! A lot of our outdoor plants aren’t built for that kind of freezing weather (in the 3 winters we’ve spent here we can remember one other low of about 32-degrees, but things went right back up to our more normal lows of around 45 degrees within a few hours). They’re calling our recent deep freeze a “once-in-a-century event” here in Florida. In other words: the ultimate test. So here are the steps we took to protect our plants, including a few things that worked better

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Filed Under: Outside

| By John Petersik | January 9, 2023 |

5 Ways We Prevented Frozen Pipes in Florida

Outdoor Shower With Cap Placed On So It Can Drip To Prevent Freezing

We thought frozen pipes were a worry we’d left behind by moving to Florida, but last month’s arctic blast sent our temperatures plummeting into the low 20s for three nights in a row (with an all-time low of 18 degrees, which they’re calling a once-in-a-century event here in Northwest, FL). This was especially concerning because Florida homes in our area aren’t always constructed with this weather in mind. Frozen pipes are bad news because water expands when it freezes, potentially causing pipes to burst or crack, leading to leaking or flooding. Luckily, with a few easy prevention steps we successfully kept our pipes from freezing! Which, sadly, isn’t something a lot of our neighbors can

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Filed Under: Home Improvement

| By John Petersik | December 15, 2022 |

The Rooms We Don’t Miss After Downsizing (And The Ones We Do)

Collage Of Four Rooms In Previous Home In Richmond Virginia

Sherry’s post a few months ago about what furniture & decor we still own after downsizing was the first time I’d looked back at photos of our previous house in a while. It was a fun walk down memory lane (how has it been 2.5 years since we moved?!). It also jogged my memory about how much “extra house” we used to have. As in, full rooms that were so under-utilized that I’d almost forgotten about them! Don’t get me wrong: we loved that house. But, as you know, it was a much bigger house than we realized we needed (spending an entire summer in our smaller pink beach house really clarified that for us

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Filed Under: Our Current House, Small Space Solutions

| By John Petersik | November 28, 2022 |

Creating Custom Storage With Ikea Bestas

Full View Of Fireplace Flanked With Ikea Besta Built Ins

Want to turn simple store-bought cabinets into custom built-ins? “Hacking” something that’s already made is so much easier than building something from scratch, and it can look really custom in the end. Built-in storage is universally helpful (especially in a smaller home – but really, anywhere), and things like the floor-to-ceiling closets in our bedroom, the desk & bookcase we added to our son’s room, and the wall-to-wall media cabinet in our family room have made such a difference. But one built-in that we’ve barely mentioned since we added and upgraded them are the Ikea Bestas flanking our fireplace: The good news is that it took just a few fairly easy steps to make them

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Filed Under: Furniture & Building, Our Current House

| By John Petersik | November 19, 2022 |

Are Robot Vacuums Worth It? Why We Changed Our Mind.

Eufy RoboVac 11S Robotic Vacuum On Traditional Runner

We owned a Roomba robot vacuum almost a decade ago because it sounded so good in theory. Something that does the vacuuming for you while you sit on the couch? Sign me up. But in reality, we had SO MANY ISSUES with it. It was extremely loud, frequently got stuck, and didn’t cover many areas before the battery died. Did I mention it always got stuck? It felt like babysitting someone who was poorly vacuuming to the point that our time was better spent actually doing the vacuuming. We finally ended up selling it on Craigslist. So imagine our surprise to now be declaring that we actually LOVE having a robot vacuum and the technology

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Filed Under: Cleaning, Organizing, & Eco

| By Sherry Petersik | November 10, 2022 |

2022 Holiday Gift Guides – with ideas as low as $7!

2022 Holiday Gift Guide Main Image Collage

Did Christmas come early this year? Nope! But our annual gift guides did (by a smidge, at least). So, without further ado… let’s dive into the 3 categories that we cover every year, which are all here in just one post: Gift Ideas for Grown-Ups Gift Ideas for Kids Gift Ideas Under $12.99 It’s probably helpful to mention that nothing was sponsored/gifted in order to get into this guide. If something’s in here, we just genuinely love it (and in many cases, already own it and can vouch for it). Each list also includes some things that we plan to give a friend or family member this year, and a few things we’d love to

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Filed Under: Holiday & Entertaining, Shopping & Thrifting

| By John Petersik | November 3, 2022 |

Adding Outdoor Storage To Our Kitchen Porch

View Of Kitchen Porch With Outdoor Grill And Table With Laptop On It

I’ll start this post with a confession: I resented our kitchen porch when we finished it last fall. Resent is a strong and, admittedly, strange word to use for a porch. But I’ll explain it later on in this post. The good news is that I no longer harbor any ill will toward it. In fact, it has become one of the spaces I’m most grateful to have in our smaller home. Especially after some functional additions that we’ve made to it over the last year since you saw it. I love this space so much, that I’m actually writing this post from it right now. Call it Method Blogging. I’m fully immersed in my

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Filed Under: Our Current House, Outside

| By Sherry Petersik | October 21, 2022 |

How I Packed Light For My Weeklong Trip To France

Three photos of Sherry In Different Outfits In Paris

Walking onto the plane carrying just a duffel and a purse for 7 days in two different areas of France (and a stop in Germany!) was my goal. And here I am standing at the airport, right after John dropped me off and took this shot. Yup. Just a purse and a duffel. I did it (with space to spare!). And because I’m nothing if not a minimal wardrobe hype woman (more on that here), please allow me to sensually tip your head back and shout directly into your mouth: “knowing how to maximize your options without dragging your entire closet with you is a real actual life hack.” So read on to see how

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Filed Under: Cleaning, Organizing, & Eco, Road Trips & Travel, Saving Money

| By John Petersik | October 11, 2022 |

How We Built Modern Wood Nightstands From Butcher Block

Wood Butcher Block Nightstand Next To Bed With Penny The Chorkie Sleeping On Pink PIllow

For the first time in our lives, after four decades of living on this planet, we’ve upgraded to a king sized bed! We’ll get more into whys and hows in an upcoming post (it’s both bigger and significantly lower) and we see the obvious irony of owning a bigger bed in our smaller house – but let’s just summarize it as: “the things we do for our dog.” You’ve also probably heard this before, but sometimes the way to feel like you’re living large in a smaller space is with fewer larger furniture pieces (as opposed to a bunch of small dollhouse-scaled furnishings). There’s such a luxury to having a nice long 90″ sofa upstairs,

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Filed Under: Furniture & Building, Our Current House

| By John Petersik | September 30, 2022 |

Our Favorite Toilet (Yes, We Have A Favorite)

Kohler Memoirs Toilet In Marble Bathroom With Wall Molding

You know you’ve left your mark on the world when people quote you in the pages of Time magazine or you get interviewed by Oprah. But what does it mean if one of your top google results is “young house love toilet” (true story)? And up until now, searching that term on our blog didn’t really lead you anywhere helpful (Sherry talks a lot about our favorite toilet mostly on IG Stories). So if that’s the rabbit hole that led you to our blog and you typed in those infamous words, this post will now have you and all of your toilet-related queries covered. Our favorite toilet is the Kohler Memoirs Elongated Toilet (sometimes also

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Filed Under: Home Improvement

| By Sherry Petersik | September 16, 2022 |

What We Still Have 2.5 Years After Downsizing

Light filled upstairs family room with Ikea fjalkinge shleves and west elm Parsons desk

Settle in. This post is a DEEP DIVE. One of those long detailed dissection/reflection posts that feels like the blogging days of yore. So if you love those & wanna grab a cup of coffee and go on a little journey with us – today’s the day. We’re about to dive into: Tips and insights we gleaned about downsizing over the last few years What items from our larger home came with us & worked WHY we think that is What we learned in hindsight about packing for a move This whole post idea came to us when we were in our downstairs sitting area recently and we realized that a lot of the furniture

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Filed Under: Moving, Selling, & Buying, Our Current House, Small Space Solutions

| By John Petersik | August 17, 2022 |

How We Upgraded A Utility Closet By Adding Tons Of Functional Storage

Detail of Utility Closet With Pretty Butcher Block Shelving

Today we’re talking about the stock market! Just kidding. Exactly as the title suggests, we’re going to show you how we earned some really useful extra storage in our new kitchen by upgrading a formerly VERY PACKED utility closet. It used to basically just have a water heater and an HVAC system in it without much room for anything else, and now there’s, say it with me… so much room for activities. Ok, not for like cartwheels, but significantly more room to store stuff than before. Like maybe 500% more. Really. If you watched our drawer-by-drawer kitchen organization video, you already got a peek at what we have going on in there, but today we’re

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Filed Under: Cleaning, Organizing, & Eco, Favorites, Home Improvement, Our Current House

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John and Sherry smiling against pink backgroundHey, we’re John & Sherry. We’ve fixed up 7 homes, written books, designed products, started a podcast, and then downsized & moved to the beach! Here you’ll find over 3,000 DIY projects & home updates. More about us…
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